Motöri the Plotter

The Motori plotter is fast and high precision. One image shows that it is drawing lines at .5mm. Like others in the flickr set, we keep thinking of how we could apply this to PCB creation. Great job [svofski]. If you want one that’s not as precise, but might have a much cooler drawing mechanism, you might want to check out the lego arm plotter we posted back in May.

There seems to be confusion about plotter accuracy. I can’t measure it to be +/- 0.5mm exactly, it’s much higher actually and I can draw a PCB many times over the same place and it will reproduce it exactly right every time. This is the good part, but…

all pens that I tried produce lines that are at least thicker than 0.5mm, and this is a serious limitation for a PCB layout, spacing between traces and pads has to be wider than usual. The ink also tends to spread a little bit unevenly on copper, so the result is not comparable with a traditional laser printer/UV photoresist method. It can work for simplier designs though. SOIC is ok, 0.8mm TQFP is ok.

You can’t hang a dremel on a plotter gantry. Plotters are not rigid enough.

Is the dude above me a complete jerk or am I wrong? the whole idea of a page like this is to show what people are doing “themselves” not what some commercial company is producing.. I for one love the plotter and think with a little refinement it could make pcb’s for us no problem.. svofski please if you read this release the schematic and any code to go along with it .. I for one cant wait to get building.. with my own toner transfer pcb and all ;)

“you just have to make it strong enough to take the weight and vibration”

This is completely true. Also, if you machine the plotter frame out of cast iron and fit it with ballslides and use ballscrews instead of belts to move the head, you could mount a heavy duty milling head on it and cut stainless steel.

Only at that point, it wouldn’t be a simple, lightweight, inexpensive plotter, would it?